This account of the years between the First and Second World Wars is riveting told by the one who championed the world against the Nazi threat. Although today, he often is dismissed as an odious "imperialist" by the progressive Left, Winston Churchill is arguably the greatest statesmen of the 20th Century by the fact that he literally stood alone vigorously sounding the alarm against Hitler. Furthermore, he led England during a time when Hitler boldly stomped over the European continent and stood against him when England had very few allies.
There is a reason that Churchill received the Nobel Prize for Literature. As he once put it "I absorbed the English Language..." His writing is breathtaking and his vocabulary is profound. Just to read his style is worth the minutes spent.
The book is multifaceted: it is a narrative of the politics of 1930's, it is a collection of facts and figures about the different skirmishes between Germany and Italy and Britain etc, it is a robust portrait of the various political leaders of the world at the time. Although Churchill did not meet Hitler ever, nevertheless he tells of a near meeting that is insightful about the leader of Germany: during a vacation in Germany, Churchill was offered a chance meeting since he was staying at a common house that was frequented by Hitler. In striking up conversation with the go between, Churchill asked his host a question that squelched any possible future meeting: 'I am curious why the fury against the Jews? - I can understand a criminal but why hold an accident of birth against him?' His host immediately comes back and claims that a meeting with Hitler would be impossible...
Churchill paints a sympathetic picture of Neville Chamberlain as one who sincerely believed in the 'Anglo - Saxon bond' that could possibly be the foundation for a serious negotiation with Hitler. His policies of Appeasement were based on this foundation but Churchill always sees Hitler as one who had an insatiable appetite for Europe. Appeasement for Churchill means weakness, feeding the Nazi appetite, offering more territory in return for nothing.
This first volume of six covering the Second World War ends with a powerful Churchillian realization that his whole life was nothing more than a preparation for leading his country and the world in the most trying time "...walking with Destiny"
